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Saturday, February 02, 2008

There’s a cynical old saying that the victors write the history. CBS’s “60 Minutes” demonstrated how that process works on Jan. 27 in airing Scott Pelley’s interview with the FBI agent who de-briefed former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

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In a world of objective reality, a reporter might say that the United States launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003, under the false pretense that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, even after Iraq had repeatedly – and accurately – announced that its WMD had been destroyed in the 1990s.

On Dec. 7, 2002, Iraq even sent to the United Nations a 12,000-page declaration explaining how its WMD stockpiles had been eliminated. In fall 2002, Hussein’s government also allowed teams of U.N. inspectors into Iraq and gave them free rein to examine any site of their choosing.

Those inspections only ended in March 2003 when President George W. Bush decided to press ahead with war despite the U.N. Security Council’s refusal to authorize the invasion and its desire to give the U.N. inspectors time to finish their work.

But none of that reality is part of the history that Americans are supposed to know. The officially sanctioned U.S. account, as embraced by Bush in speech after speech, is that Saddam Hussein “chose war” by defying the U.N. over the WMD issue and by misleading the world into believing that he still possessed these weapons.

In line with Bush’s version of history, “60 Minutes” correspondent Pelley asked FBI interrogator George Piro why Hussein kept pretending that he had WMD even as U.S. troops massed on Iraq’s borders, when a simple announcement that the WMD was gone would have prevented the war.

“For a man who drew America into two wars and countless military engagements, we never knew what Saddam Hussein was thinking,” Pelley said in introducing the segment on the interrogation of Hussein about his WMD stockpiles. “Why did he choose war with the United States?”

The segment never mentions the fact that Hussein’s government did disclose that it had eliminated its WMD. Instead Pelley presses Piro on the question of why Hussein was hiding that fact.

Piro said Hussein explained to him that “most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the ‘90s, and those that hadn’t been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq.”

After Piro mentioned Hussein’s lingering fear of neighboring Iran, Pelley felt he was close to an answer to the mystery: “He believed that he couldn’t survive without the perception that he had weapons of mass destruction?”

Wanting an Invasion?

But, still, Pelley puzzled over why Hussein’s continued in his miscalculation.

Pelley asked: “As the U.S. marched toward war and we began massing troops on his border, why didn’t he stop it then? And say, ‘Look, I have no weapons of mass destruction,’ I mean, how could he have wanted his country to be invaded?”

It’s Bush World, with Pelley – like other prominent U.S. news correspondents – ignoring the well-established facts of the run-up to war and following the made-up story first presented by Bush four months after he forced the U.N. inspectors out, when he began claiming that Hussein had never let them in.

On July 14, 2003, as the U.S.-led WMD search also was coming up empty, Bush began asserting that it was all Hussein’s fault because he had never let the U.N. inspectors in. Bush told reporters:

“We gave him [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power.”

Facing no challenge from the White House press corps, Bush continued repeating this lie in varied forms over the next four years as part of his public litany for defending the invasion.

On Jan. 27, 2004, for example, Bush said, “We went to the United Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming resolution – 1441 – unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam, you must disclose and destroy your weapons programs, which obviously meant the world felt he had such programs. He chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in.”

As the months and years went by, Bush’s lie and its constant retelling took on the color of truth.

At a March 21, 2006, news conference, Bush again blamed the war on Hussein’s defiance of U.N. demands for unfettered inspections.

“I was hoping to solve this [Iraq] problem diplomatically,” Bush said. “The world said, ‘Disarm, disclose or face serious consequences.’ … We worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny the inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did.”

At a press conference on May 24, 2007, Bush offered a short-hand version, even inviting the journalists to remember the invented history.

“As you might remember back then, we tried the diplomatic route: [U.N. Resolution] 1441 was a unanimous vote in the Security Council that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. So the choice was his [Hussein’s] to make. And he made a choice that has subsequently caused him to lose his life.”

In the frequent repetition of this claim, Bush never acknowledges the fact that Hussein did comply with Resolution 1441 by declaring accurately that he had disposed of his WMD stockpiles and by permitting U.N. inspectors to examine any site of their choosing.

Journalistic Group Think

Prominent Washington journalists have even repeated Bush’s lie as their own. For instance, in a July 2004 interview, ABC’s veteran newsman Ted Koppel used it to explain why he – Koppel – thought the invasion of Iraq was justified.

“It did not make logical sense that Saddam Hussein, whose armies had been defeated once before by the United States and the Coalition, would be prepared to lose control over his country if all he had to do was say, ‘All right, U.N., come on in, check it out,” Koppel told Amy Goodman, host of “Democracy Now.”

Of course, Hussein did tell the U.N. to “come on in, check it out.” But he did so in the real history, not in the faux reality that now governs Washington and pervades America’s top news programs, including “60 Minutes.”

In Pelley’s historical formulation, the question is not why did Bush invade Iraq in violation of international law, causing the deaths of nearly 4,000 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, but rather “How could [Hussein] have wanted his country to be invaded?”

This strategy of repeating a “big lie” often enough to make it sound true was famously described in the writings of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels during World War II. However, given the relatively free U.S. press, many Americans feel they are protected from “big lie” techniques, counting on journalists to call lying politicians to account.

But that clearly is no longer the case – and hasn’t been for some time. Facing career pressure from well-organized right-wing attack groups, American journalists act more like triangulating politicians, fearful of accusations of “liberal bias” or unpatriotic behavior or softness on terrorism.

To have challenged George W. Bush in July 2003 – when he was near the height of his popularity – or even now with his approval ratings at historic lows would carry career dangers that few American reporters want to risk.

So, discretion – or in this case the acceptance of a lie as truth – is the better part of valor.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

Empire Burlesque's Official Endorsement in the 2008 Presidential Race Written by Chris Floyd Friday, 01 February 2008

People often say to me, "Gosh, Chris, you sure give our politicians a lot of guff. Seems like you find something wrong with everybody out there, no matter what their political stripe. Is there anybody at all that you could support for president?" That's what people say to me.

Well, thanks to the good offices of Scott Horton at Harper's, I'm happy to say that I have now found a presidential candidate to whom I can give my wholehearted, full-throated support: a man of the people, a son of the soil, a straight-talker with business moxie, military experience and a wide knowledge of foreign parts. I am proud to stand here today (why yes, I do write this blog standing up – and I hope you read it in the same way) and second Horton's nomination for the only man who can lead our great nation back to, er, greatness. My fellow Americans, I give you the right honorable Samuel Langhorne Clemens!

I have pretty much made up my mind to run for President. What the country wants is a candidate who cannot be injured by investigation of his past history so that the enemies of the party will be unable to rake up anything against him that nobody ever heard of before. If you know the worst about a candidate to begin with, every attempt to spring things on him will be checkmated. Now I am going to enter the field with an open record. I am going to own up in advance to all the wickedness I have done....

I candidly acknowledge that I ran away at the battle of Gettysburg. My friends have tried to smooth over this fact by asserting that I did so for the purpose of imitating Washington, who went into the woods at Valley Forge for the purpose of saying his prayers. It was a miserable subterfuge. I struck out in a straight line for the Tropic of Cancer because I was scared. I wanted my country saved, but I preferred to have somebody else save it. I entertain that preference yet. If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon’s mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty. If it is loaded, my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home.

My invariable practice in war has been to bring out of every fight two-thirds more men than when I went in. This seems to me to be Napoleonic in its grandeur.

My financial views are of the most decided character, but they are not likely, perhaps, to increase my popularity with the advocates of inflation. I do not insist upon the special supremacy of rag money or hard money. The great fundamental principle of my life is to take any kind I can get...

....These are about the worst parts of my record. On them I come before the country. If my country don’t want me, I will go back again. But I recommend myself as a safe man – a man who starts from the basis of total depravity and proposes to be fiendish to the last.

You should of course go read the whole piece at Harper's. But before you go -- or when you get back -- check out some more of the candidate's position papers that I, policy wonk that I am, dug up after joining the campaign:

We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one -- the one we use -- which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us comfortable in it, and the custom of defending it presently makes us love it, adore it, and forget how pitifully we came by it. Look at it in politics. Look at the candidates whom we loathe, one year, and are afraid to vote against, the next; whom we cover with unimaginable filth, one year, and fall down on the public platform and worship, the next--and keep on doing it until the habitual shutting of our eyes to last year's evidences brings us presently to a sincere and stupid belief in this year's. Look at the tyranny of party--at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty -- a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes -- and which turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits, and all the while their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing their doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful of humane defenders with Bible texts and billies, and pocketing the insults and licking the shoes of his Southern master.

If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times. A Hartford clergyman met me in the street and spoke of a new nominee -- denounced the nomination, in strong, earnest words -- words that were refreshing for their independence, their manliness. He said, "I ought to be proud, perhaps, for this nominee is a relative of mine; on the contrary, I am humiliated and disgusted, for I know him intimately -- familiarly -- and I know that he is an unscrupulous scoundrel, and always has been." You should have seen this clergyman preside at a political meeting forty days later, and urge, and plead, and gush -- and you should have heard him paint the character of this same nominee. You would have supposed he was describing the Cid, and Greatheart, and Sir Galahad, and Bayard the Spotless all rolled into one. Was he sincere? Yes -- by that time; and therein lies the pathos of it all, the hopelessness of it all. It shows at what trivial cost of effort a man can teach himself to lie, and learn to believe it, when he perceives, by the general drift, that that is the popular thing to do...

Now we all know that flattery of the electorate is the quintessence of politics. No candidate can come before the American people without telling them what exalted, God-blessed, peerless and unprecedented paragons of goodness and wisdom they all are. And candidate Clemens is certainly a master of this indispensible art, as we can see below:

. . . There are certain sweet-smelling sugar-coated lies current in the world which all politic men have apparently tacitly conspired together to support and perpetuate. One of these is, that there is such a thing in the world as independence: independence of thought, independence of opinion, independence of action. Another is, that the world loves to see independence--admires it, applauds it. Another is, that there is such a thing in the world as toleration--in religion, in politics, and such matters; and with it trains that already mentioned auxiliary lie that toleration is admired and applauded. Out of these trunk-lies spring many branch ones: to wit, the lie that not all men are slaves: the lie that men are glad when other men succeed; glad when they prosper; glad to see them reach lofty heights; sorry to see them fall again. And yet other branch lies: to wit, that there is heroism in man; that he is not mainly made up of malice and treachery; that he is sometimes not a coward; that there is something about him that ought to be perpetuated -- in heaven, or hell, or somewhere. And these other branch lies, to wit: that conscience, man's moral medicine chest, is not only created by the Creator, but is put into man ready charged with the right and only true and authentic correctives of conduct -- and the duplicate chest, with the self-same correctives, unchanged, unmodified, distributed to all nations and all epochs. And yet one other branch lie: to wit, that I am I, and you are you; that we are units, individuals, and have natures of our own, instead of being the tail end of a tapeworm eternity of ancestors extending in linked procession back and back and back--to our source in the monkeys, with this so-called individuality of ours a decayed and rancid mush of inherited instincts and teachings derived, atom by atom, stench by stench, from the entire line of that sorry column, and not so much new and original matter in it as you could balance on a needle point and examine under a microscope....

All the talk about tolerance, in anything or anywhere, is plainly a gentle lie. It does not exist. It is in no man's heart; but it unconsciously, and by moss-grown inherited habit, drivels and slobbers from all men's lips. Intolerance is everything for oneself, and nothing for the other person. The mainspring of man's nature is just that -- selfishness. Let us skip the other lies, for brevity's sake. To consider them would prove nothing, except that man is what he is -- loving toward his own, lovable to his own--his family, his friends -- and otherwise the buzzing, busy, trivial enemy of his race --who tarries his little day, does his little dirt, commends himself to God, and then goes out into the darkness, to return no more, and send no messages back -- selfish even in death.

Yes, I think we have a winner here. So join the Clemens campaign today! Empire Burlesque is honored to be handling the finances for this selfless crusade. Anything you can send -- rag money or hard money -- to the PayPal address at the top right of this page will keep the great Clemens riverboat steaming down the river toward victory in November.

Read More Add Comment (5) Hits: 254 Tag it: Mine Your Business: Subterranean Bush-Clinton Blues Written by Chris Floyd Friday, 01 February 2008 I must admit that when I first saw this headline in Thursday's New York Times -- An Ex-President, a Mining Deal and a Big Donor -- I thought the paper had exhumed one of the sleazier stories from the Bush Family past, perhaps in expiation for having left so many filth-encrusted Bush rocks unturned for so many years -- especially during L'il Dimbulb's presidential campaign in 2000.

In the end, of course, the story turned out to be the shocking revelation that Bill Clinton is a money-grubbing manwhore eager to service brutal dictators to line his own pockets and funnel backroom pork to his cronies. Wow, who knew?

[The Times has since changed the headline to mention Clinton by name -- perhaps to make sure that no one gets the crazy idea that any other ex-presidents might be hip-deep in sleaze.]

However, we don't mean to heap scorn on the Times' story. It was indeed interesting to get this detailed glimpse into the way the world works behind the endless preening of mugs and murderers who pass as leaders on the global stage. And it demonstrates -- yet again -- that there is no discernible moral difference between the two ruling houses that have dominated the gutted Republic for nearly 30 years now. (A Bush or Clinton in the White House, as president or vice president, from 1981 to 2008 -- with a good chance of at least four more years in the offing.) No wonder the two families get along so famously -- and no wonder B. Clinton moved so swiftly and strenuously to quash investigations into the crimes of his Bush predecessor, as the incomparable Robert Parry points out. No doubt H. Clinton will do same for her Bush if she gets the chance.

But here's a look back at that earlier hook-up between an ex-prez, a mining company and a big donor. This is an excerpt from an article I wrote for the Moscow Times in May 2004:

In April, [George W.] Bush quietly gave a mining conglomerate larded with his top contributors a little gift: $155 million worth of federal land, the Denver Post reports. Invoking an obscure 1872 law designed to help frontier prospectors gain title to their small mining claims, Bush turned over a swathe of prime Colorado mountaintop property to the firm of Dodge Phelps, whose board is packed with oil men, military contractors and official Bush "Pioneers": corporate fat cats who've strongarmed at least $100,000 from their friends - and employees - for Bush campaign coffers.

Because the never-updated 1872 law requires that federal mining land be sold for $5 per acre, Bush's bagmen only had to pony up $875 for the whole spread - in an area where land is worth a staggering $1 million per acre. The idea is to build an elite ski playground on the looted public property - even though the law requires that such land sales be used for actual mining....

In the Colorado caper, as in so many others, Bush is following in the mucky footprints of his father. In the waning days of his failed presidency, George I used the same 1872 law to cut a sweetheart deal with Barrick, the Canadian mining giant. For $10,000 in chump change to the federal treasury, Old Bush gave Barrick government land containing $10 billion in gold, The Observer reports.

Afterwards, Bush I became a "special advisor" to Barrick, pocketing kickbacks from the gold deal for seven years and traveling the world on behalf of his corporate master, trying to rig up insider deals with his "old friends" - bloodthirsty dictators like Indonesia's Suharto and Zaire's Mobutu. In return, Barrick later poured streams of its Bush-gotten gold into Little George's 2000 campaign.

And Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier quickly pushed the panic button when he found Canada's diplomats are being trained to keep an eye open to torture not only by 'pariah states' like Iran and Syria, but also by what the Harper Regime refers to as "close allies".

That vigilance won Canada credit from Amnesty International, which praised us for being alert to rights abuses.

But the howls of outrage from Washington and Jerusalem at finding themselves on the foreign affairs watchlist next to "axis of evil" Iran sent Bernier lunging for the delete key faster than you can say "welcome to Gitmo." It was all a big, regrettable mistake, he said.

In future, Canada's "Torture Awareness Workshop Reference Materials" will be carefully purged of references to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, and of any other mention of the U.S. or Israel that might give offence. On balance, that's probably just as well. The checklist was not a brilliant idea. Only nine countries were named. Far more dabble in torture. Diplomats shouldn't need a list to be watchful.

But Bernier's scramble to say sorry for "the embarrassment caused" raises the question of who really deserves that fulsome apology.

The U.S., which only recently outlawed waterboarding? Israel, which reserves the right to use "moderate physical pressure" during interrogations? Prime Minister Stephen Harper's risk-averse government, for being caught with its pinstripes down? Or Canadians, who were mortified by this bungling and abject backflip?

(And the undo influence of foreign politicians on our policies ... ?

Canada Puts Israel, US on Torture List-But Then Bows to Pressure

Either Israel and the US have suddenly stopped using torture, or the Harper Regime doesn't want its diplomats making decisions based on the facts.

TORONTO - Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier found himself backtracking Saturday over his department's training manual that lists the U.S. and Guantanamo Bay as sites of possible torture - alongside such countries as Iran and Syria (and Israel).

In a statement, Bernier said he regretted the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the manual, adding that it contains a list that "wrongly" includes some of Canada's closest allies.

(But not because they don't use torture, 'wrong' as in we're not allowed to talk about them doing it.)

Bernier said the manual is neither a policy document, nor a statement of policy, and that he has directed it to be reviewed and rewritten.

(Even though it is, because it's a training manual for diplomats.)

Along with the U.S. prison camp in Cuba and the United States, the list includes Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Mexico and Syria.

The workshop manual, which was used in the Foreign Affairs department's torture awareness training, was produced about two years ago while Justice Dennis O'Connor was investigating the case of Maher Arar.

Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian engineer, was imprisoned and tortured in Syria for almost a year after he was detained and sent there by U.S. authorities in 2002 after he was wrongfully accused of having terrorist ties. A Canadian judicial inquiry, led by O'Connor, later cleared him. Ottawa awarded Arar $10.5 million in compensation after the inquiry concluded faulty information passed by the RCMP to American officials likely led to his deportation to Syria.

William Sampson, who holds a dual British-Canadian citizenship, was imprisoned and tortured in Saudi Arabia where he was arrested in 2001, accused of involvement in a string of bombings in Riyadh. He was among seven foreigners granted amnesty and freed in 2003.

(None of the criminals who passed false information to the Americans, however, have been held responsible for their crimes.)

The workshop manual offers a section on laws prohibiting torture and what to do when cases are suspected.

The Canadian Press first reported the manual's existence on Wednesday after it had been inadvertently released to lawyers working on a lawsuit involving allegations of abuse of detainees in Afghanistan when they asked the federal government what kind of training is available for its employees on torture.

"I regret the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the manual used in the department's torture awareness training," Bernier said in the statement.

"It contains a list that wrongly includes some of our closest allies. I have directed that the manual be reviewed and rewritten. The manual is neither a policy document nor a statement of policy. As such, it does not convey the government's views or positions," the statement added.

('Positions and views' that include looking the other way when 'allies' of the Neo-Conservative Harper Regime violate international law ...)

In Toronto, Liberal foreign affairs critic, Bob Rae, told The Canadian Press the government is in damage control.

"There's a question of competence. I mean, to me, I don't think I've ever seen a situation, or a government where the management of the foreign policy was handled in such an amateurish way on a number of fronts," said Rae.

(And directed by foreign Governments, and their ability to silence legitimate, legal criticisms.)

"The minister goes to the Middle East and can't answer any questions when he's in Israel because, you know, he's not allowed to answer any questions, " Rae added. "They attempt to control everything from central casting but sometimes things happen and then they immediately try to do the damage control on a Saturday morning."

(In other words, he can't answer questions, because he's not allowed to speak to the reality of the situation.)

"This is a very strange way to run a government," he suggested, adding any list of this kind can't be politically controlled.

"It's a list that has to be based on the evidence from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, agencies of the United Nations and so on."

Rae said he hopes the government gets on with the review quickly and reveals the criteria that will be used to determine which countries should be on the list.

"The idea that you would equate the government of the United States with the government of Iran with respect to the treatment of prisoners is a little hard to fathom," said Rae.

(Why? Because the US does much more damage and violates the law more than Iran ... ?)

"But the fact that both Senator (John) McCain and Senator (Barack) Obama had to speak so strongly on the issue of torture during the questioning of the former attorney general of the United States shows that the question of the treatment of prisoners in the United States is a live question," said Rae.

"But it is impossible to justify comparing it to what is going on in a country like Iran, where we have documented evidence of systematic torture of prisoners," said Rae.

(Evidence also proves systematic torture of prisoners by the US and Israel. On a much grander scale. Not suprised that Rae would also be so cowed on the issue ...)

U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins said the U.S. found it offensive to be on the same list with countries such as Iran and China. He said the U.S. requested it be removed from the list and added the U.S. does not condone torture.

(Actions speak louder than words.)

An Israeli Embassy spokesman said the ambassador of Israel would expect his country to be removed from the list.

(Then we 'expect' Israel to forego the practice of torturing prisoners, political or otherwise.)

Omar Khadr's lawyers say they can't understand why Canada is not doing more to help their client in light of new evidence that Ottawa has put the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on a watch list for torture.

Khadr -- a Canadian citizen who was just 15-years-old when he was captured in Afghanistan more than five years ago and taken to Guantanamo -- has claimed that he has been tortured at the prison. Now, CTV News has obtained documents that put Guantanamo Bay on a torture watch list.

Khadr's U.S. military lawyer says the new documents contradict Harper's assurances that his client is receiving fair treatment.

"Omar has certainly been abused, his rights have been violated under international law, and apparently the Canadian government has reason to believe that's true, and yet, they've acted not at all to assist him," William Kuebler told CTV News.

Khadr's lawyers say suspicions of torture undermine claims that he can get a fair trial from the military commission in Guantanamo Bay. They want him sent back to Canada to face justice here. But the government has said he's charged with serious crimes and they are waiting for the U.S. judicial process to play itself out.

Canada's new focus on torture was ordered by the inquiry into Maher Arar's nightmare in Syria. U.S. authorities sent Arar -- a Canadian of Syrian ancestory -- to Syria after he made a brief stopover in New York in 2002. They wrongly accused him of having links to terrorism in large part because of information provided by the RCMP.

Arar was sent to a Syrian prison where he was tortured for nearly a year. An inquiry into the Arar affair ordered a new focus on torture, and CTV News has learned that, as part of a "torture awareness workshop," diplomats are now being told where to watch for abuse.

The aim of the workshop: to teach diplomats who visit Canadians in foreign jails how to tell if they've been tortured. It also listed countries and places with greater risks of torture. The list includes Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, and China. But surprisingly, it also included the United States, Guantanamo Bay, and Israel.

It notes specific "U.S. interrogation techniquies," which include "forced nudity, isolation, and sleep deprivation." The U.S. has repeatedly denied allegations by international groups that it tortures prisoners captured in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. However, U.S. officials have refused to comment on the Canadian list.

But international observers say they are heartened by the specificity of the Canadian list. Alex Neve of Amnesty International says he is surprised that Canada would risk offending allies by naming countries that potentially torture prisoners.

"These are countries where, sadly, the record is clear -- torture and ill treatment happens," said Neve.

But it appears that Ottawa may have had second thoughts about being so explicit. After the documents were released as evidence in a court case relating to Afghan detainees, the government tried to get them back. Sources say that Ottawa apparently wanted to black out sensitive parts that may anger allies.

Khadr -- who was born in Toronto -- was captured in 2002 after a battle with U.S. forces in which an American soldier died. He's accused of war crimes, but critics have alleged the U.S. military court that is trying him violates U.S. and international law. Khadr is the only Western citizen remaining at Guantanamo Bay.

A war crimes trial has never been held against anyone under the age of 18. International observers have questioned Ottawa's decision not to help Khadr, who many believe is no different than child soldiers victimized in Africa.

OTTAWA (AFP) - The United States and Israel are on a Canadian Foreign Affairs Department watch list of countries where prisoners risk being tortured, CTV television reported Thursday.

The document cited the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a place where prisoners could be tortured. Guantanamo holds Omar Khadr, a Canadian accused of killing a US soldier with a hand grenade in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old.

CTV said the document is used in a workshop to teach Canadian diplomats how to tell if a Canadian held in a foreign jail has been tortured, CTV reported.

The document lists a series of countries where the possibility of torture is high, including Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and China. But it also includes the United States and Israel.

Questioned by email by AFP on the reported document, Foreign Affairs Department spokesman Neil Hrab said "the training manual is not a policy document and does not reflect the views or policies of this government."

In an interview with CTV, Khadr's lawyer, Bill Kuebler, said he was surprised the Canadian government has done nothing to protect his client if there are suspicions he may have been mistreated in Guantanamo.

Kuebler said other western countries have successfully pressed for the release of their citizens held at Guantanamo.

Human rights groups and prominent Canadian citizens are calling for 21-year-old Khadr's repatriation so he can benefit from normal due process of law.

Training diplomats to make them more aware of torture began after Syrian-Canadian Maher Arar in 2002 was deported by the United States to Syria, where he was imprisoned for nearly a year and said he was tortured.

A Canadian inquiry cleared Arar of all suspicions of terrorism and the Canadian government issued an apology and awarded him a substantial compensation.

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier has issued a statement in an effort to pacify allies angry over a training manual for Canadian diplomats that lists the U.S. and Israel as countries where prisoners risk torture and abuse.

Bernier said the manual "contains a list that wrongly includes some of our closest allies."

(Wrongly how, exactly? Just because Harper has decided to ally himself with these criminals doesn't change the fact that they routinely engage in torture.)

Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier, right, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, has been forced to clarify why a Canadian dliplomatic document listed Israel and the U.S. as sites of possible torture. (Amos Ben Gershom/Associated Press) "I regret the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the manual used in the department's torture awareness training," he said in a statement released Saturday.

"The manual is neither a policy document nor a statement of policy," he said. "As such, it does not convey the government's views or positions."

Bernier said he has directed the manual to be reviewed and rewritten, but he did not provide details.

The torture awareness training manual was inadvertently released on Friday to lawyers working on a lawsuit involving allegations that detainees were abused in Afghanistan.

The document singles out the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay as a site of possible abuse. It also names Israel, Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Syria as places where inmates could face torture.

U.S. ambassador to Canada David Wilkins told the Associated Press that it's "absurd" and "offensive" to place the United States on the same list along with countries like Iran and China.

Michael Mendel, a spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Ottawa, said Israel's Supreme Court "is on record as expressly prohibiting any type of torture."

(So is the US. But both countries still practice torture.)

www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/01/19/torture-manual.html

Torture stance reversed

Jan. 20

It's well-known that the U.S. turns a blind eye to friendly governments that torture. We even have documented proof that the U.S. subcontracted torture in the Maher Arar case, and that it trained and supported torturers in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, etc.

Innocent people released from Guantanamo Bay have testified that they were subjected to torture. Many of those detained in the U.S. after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 also testified to being tortured.

The Israeli press has been documenting Israeli interrogation tactics for decades, and many credible reports of torture have been made by Amnesty International and Human Right Watch.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper should inform the U.S. and Israel that he would be overjoyed to remove them from the list of torturers when they stop – just exactly as he should advise Iran, Egypt, China, Afghanistan and others.

[eds note: There is currently a tumult going on in Canada regarding revelations Canada's military in Afghanistan refused last November to remove prisoners they had taken to the custody of the Afghani military or police due to concerns for their safety and Canada's international treaty obligations to protect prisoners. Nothing I'm aware of has been said about "Canada" transferring said prisoners into the hands of U.S. forces there, or elsewhere, given the admission, in the form of a training manual produced for Canadian diplomats, listing the United States and other close ally, Israel, as states that practice torture. - lex]

The ruling Conservative government has heretofore accepted assurances by the Bush administration that the United States does not engage in torture against prisoners, including detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

A Canadian man, Omar Khadr, is currently being held at the U.S. military prison there. He is accused of a 2002 killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old.

Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, Khadr's U.S. military lawyer, told Canadian broadcaster CTV that he believes the manual contradicts Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's assurances that his client has received fair treatment.

"Omar has been there for five-and-a-half years, and at some point in the course of Omar Khadr's detention the Canadian government developed the suspicion he was being tortured and abused," Kuebler told the news program "Canada AM."

"And yet it has not acted to obtain his release from Guantanamo Bay and protect his rights, unlike every other Western country that has had its nationals detained in Guantanamo Bay."

A United States Embassy spokesperson told Reuters, “The United States does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances.”

The manual - a PowerPoint presentation - is for training diplomats in protecting Canadian citizens who may be detained and subject to abuse in other countries.

CTV said the manual listed, among specific U.S. interrogation techniques, "forced nudity, isolation, and sleep deprivation."

The program was developed as part of a "torture awareness workshop," in response to the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, born in Syria, who was detained by the United States in 2002 under suspicion that he was tied to terrorists. Arar was transported to Syria. A Canadian inquiry later determined he was tortured there.

Arar was awarded C$11.5 million by the Canadian government as compensation.

Getting Duped: How the Media Messes with Your MindStatements made in the media can surreptitiously plant distortions in the minds of millions. Learning to recognize two commonly used fallacies can help you separate fact from fictionBy Yvonne Raley and Robert Talisse

In 2003 nearly half of all Americans falsely assumed that the U.S. government had found solid evidence for a link between Iraq and al Qaeda. What is more, almost a quarter of us believed that investigators had all but confirmed the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a 2003 report by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks, a polling and market research firm. How did the true situation in Iraq become so grossly distorted in American minds?

Many people have attributed such misconceptions to a politically motivated disinformation campaign to engender support for the armed struggle in Iraq. We do not think the deceptions were premeditated, however. Instead they are most likely the result of common types of reasoning errors, which appear frequently in discussions in the news media and which can easily fool an unsuspecting public.

News shows often have an implicit bias that may motivate the portrayal of facts and opinions in misleading ways, even if the information presented is largely accurate. Nevertheless, by becoming familiar with how spokespeople can create false impressions, media consumers can learn to ignore certain claims and thereby avoid getting duped. We have detected two general types of fallacies—one of them well known and the other newly identified—that have permeated discussion of the Iraq War and that are generally ubiquitous in political debates and other discourse.

Spinning Straw into Fool’s Gold One common method of spinning information is the so-called straw man argument. In this tactic, a person summarizes the opposition’s position inaccurately so as to weaken it and then refutes that inaccurate rendition. In a November 2005 speech, for example, President George W. Bush responded to questions about pulling troops out of Iraq by saying, “We’ve heard some people say, pull them out right now. That’s a huge mistake. It’d be a terrible mistake. It sends a bad message to our troops, and it sends a bad message to our enemy, and it sends a bad message to the Iraqis.” The statement that unnamed “people” are advocating a troop withdrawal from Iraq “right now” is a straw man, because it exaggerates the opposing viewpoint. Not even the most stalwart Bush adversaries backed an immediate troop withdrawal. Most proposed that the soldiers be sent home over several months, a more reasonable and persuasive plan that Bush undercut with his straw man.

The straw man is used in countless other contexts as well. In his acceptance speech at the 1996 Democratic Convention, for instance, Bill Clinton opined: “… with all respect [to Bob Dole], we do not need to build a bridge to the past. We need to build a bridge to the future.” Dole did discuss restoring the values of an earlier America, but Clinton falsely implied that Dole was only looking backward (whereas Clinton was looking forward). People may use a straw man to discredit theories to which they do not subscribe. Characterizing evolution, for example, as “all random chance” is a straw man argument; it misrepresents a complex theory that only partly rests on the randomness of mutations that may lead to better chances of survival.

Recently, in a 2006 paper co-authored with Scott F. Aikin, one of us (Talisse) documented a twist on the straw man tactic. In what Talisse dubs a weak man argument, a person sets up the opposition’s weakest (or one of its weakest) arguments or proponents for attack, as opposed to misstating a rival’s position as the straw man argument does. In a July 2007 edition of Talking Points, Bill O’Reilly took on a claim by the New York Times that we had lost the war in Iraq by saying that “the New York Times declared defeat in Iraq Sunday on its editorial page, and there’s no question the antiwar movement has momentum.” (The editorial actually said that “some opponents of the Iraq war are toying with the idea of American defeat,” but let us assume that O’Reilly’s characterization was correct.)

O’Reilly then offered a weak man explanation for the purported defeat: “The truth is the Iraqi government and many of its citizens are simply not doing enough to defeat the terrorists and corruption. The U.S.A. can’t control that country. No nation could.... Unfortunately, the Iraqi failure to help themselves has come true.” Although Iraq’s failure to aid in fighting terrorism and corruption could be why we are losing the war, the troubles in Iraq could also stem from a host of logistical reasons, some of which may shed a negative light on the current administration. O’Reilly, however, kept any discussion of these reasons offstage, suppressing the various other possible—and possibly more likely—reasons for “defeat” in Iraq. Meanwhile his claims that the “U.S.A. can’t control that country” and that “no nation could” deflected blame from the U.S. government.

Weak man arguments are pervasive. In a 2005 editorial in Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, conservative writer and activist David Horowitz picked on ethnic studies scholar Ward Churchill, formerly at the University of Colorado at Boulder, whose views he described as “hateful and ignorant.” Horowitz then went on to claim that Churchill’s radical “hate America” convictions “represent” those of a “substantial seg­ment of the academic community.” Thus, he used the example of Churchill (the weak man) to argue that “tenured radicals” have made universities into leftist political institutions and subverted the academic enterprise, thereby failing to acknowledge the presence of more highly regarded and politically mainstream scholars in academia.

Trolling for TruthWeak man tactics are harder to detect than those of the straw man variety. Because straw man arguments are closely related to an opponent’s true position, a clever listener might be able to spot the truth amid the hyperbole, understatement or other corrupted version of that view. A weak man argument, however, is more opaque because it contains a grain of truth and often bears little similarity to the stronger arguments that should also be presented. Therefore, a listener has to know a lot more about the situation to imagine the information that a speaker or writer has cleverly disregarded.

Nevertheless, an astute consumer of the news can catch many straw man and weak man fallacies by knowing how they work. Another strategy is to always consider a speaker’s or writer’s motivation or agenda and be especially alert for skewed statements of fact in editorials, television opinion shows, and the like. It is also wise to obtain news from more balanced news sources. An alternative approach is to try to construct, in your own mind, the best argument against what you have heard before accepting it as true. Or simply ask yourself: Why should I not believe this?

My mother passed away on January 12, after a long illness. She was nearly 72 and had been very ill since mid-2005. Intellectually, one might think that perhaps I had time to "come to terms" with a sense of inevitably...yet I remain inconsolable. Despite having almost three years to "prepare" for this reality, her death is teaching me previously unimaginable lessons about grief, sorrow, and loss. My heart is broken, shattered in a million pieces.

Amidst my mourning, I can't help but visualize the feelings of grief, sorrow, and loss being experienced in places directly and indirectly impacted by US policies. Imagine if you will, a mother in Iraq. She walks to the market as an American bomb levels her home. Her parents, her husband, her children (none of whom were affiliated with the "insurgency"): all killed. What of "her" grief, sorrow, and loss...as the US continues to spend one million dollars per minute on war?

And it's not just military murders. Every two seconds, somewhere on the planet, a child starves to death. More grief, sorrow, and loss. More anger and frustration, too. Columnist and author Norman Solomon recently shared similar emotions when his mother died. "Our own mourning should help us understand and strive to prevent the unspeakable pain of others," he wrote.

"And whatever love we have for one person, we should try to apply to the world."

There's a line in the song, "Middle of the Road" by the Pretenders: "When you own a big chunk of the bloody Third World...the babies just come with the scenery."

What's that...we don't own anything here or in the Third World? Here's the equation, friends: American tax dollars (and our rhetoric and/or our support and/or our silence) fund and/or enable US domination of institutions like the World Bank. As a result, the developing world spends $13 on debt repayment for every $1 it receives in aid. That means untold billions are allocated toward paying off debt to powerful Western banks instead of being invested in water systems, infrastructure to rural communities, education, and health care.

A 2004 UNICEF report on the State of the World's Children found:

* One in six of the children on the planet were severely hungry

* One in seven had no access to health care

* One in five had no safe water

* One in three had no toilet or sanitation facilities at home

* 640 million children did not have adequate shelter

* 140 million children, the majority of them girls, had never been to school

More than 10 million child deaths were recorded in 2003, with an estimated 29,158 children under 5 dying from mostly preventable causes every day.

29,158. Under 5. Every day. From preventable causes.

The next time you're at a baseball game or rock concert, glance around and get a feel for what 29,158 looks like. Then try your best to conceive of the feelings of grief, sorrow, and loss inspired by those 29,158...each and every day. These are humans, not statistics. They feel as much as you or I.

If they feel anything like I do right now, they are utterly despondent.

"In mediaspeak and political discourse, the human toll of corporate domination and the warfare state is routinely abstract," wrote Solomon. "But the results-in true human terms-add rage and more grief on top of grief."

These doomed humans cry, they mourn, they miss loved ones, and they ask why when the UN tells them that the basic nutrition and health needs of the world's poorest people would cost only $13 billion a year (that's less than 10% of what the US has spent on the war in Iraq so far).

Remember: every two seconds, somewhere on the planet, a child starves to death. Meanwhile, the US spends one million dollars per minute on war. Do the math: How much of our money was spent on war and how many children starved to death while your read this article?

We often hear the question: "Why do they hate us?"

We give them an excellent reason every 2 seconds and a million more reasons every single minute.

Mickey Z. is the author of the forthcoming novel, 'CPR for Dummies' (Raw Dog Screaming Press).

Andrew Feldmar, a well-known Vancouver psychotherapist, rolled up to the Blaine border crossing last summer as he had hundreds of times in his career. At 66, his gray hair, neat beard, and rimless glasses give him the look of a seasoned intellectual. He handed his passport to the U.S. border guard and relaxed, thinking he would soon be with an old friend in Seattle. The border guard turned to his computer and googled "Andrew Feldmar."

The psychotherapist's world was about to turn upside down.

Born in Hungary to Jewish parents as the Nazis were rising to power, Feldmar was hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust when he was three years old, after his parents were condemned to Auschwitz. Miraculously, his parents both returned alive and in 1945 Hungary was liberated by the Russian army. Feldmar escaped from communist Hungary in 1956 when he was 16 and immigrated to Canada. He has been married to Meredith Feldmar, an artist, for 37 years, and they live in Vancouver's Kitsilano neighbourhood. They have two children, Soma, 33, who lives in Denver, and Marcel, 36, a resident of L.A. Highly respected in his field, Feldmar has been travelling to the U.S. for work and to see his family five or six times a year. He has worked for the UN, in Sarajevo and in Minsk with Chernobyl victims.

The Blaine border guard explained that Feldmar had been pulled out of the line as part of a random search. He seemed friendly, even as he took away Feldmar's passport and car keys. While the contents of his car were being searched, Feldmar and the officer talked. He asked Feldmar what profession he was in.

When Feldmar said he was psychologist, the official typed his name into his Internet search engine. Before long the customs guard was engrossed in an article Feldmar had published in the spring 2001 issue of the journal Janus Head. The article concerned an acid trip Feldmar had taken in London, Ontario, and another in London, England, almost forty years ago. It also alluded to the fact that he had used hallucinogenics as a "path" to understanding self and that in certain cases, he reflected, it could "be preferable to psychiatry." Everything seemed to collapse around him, as a quiet day crossing the border began to turn into a nightmare.

Fingerprints for FBI

He was told to sit down on a folding chair and for hours he wondered where this was going. He checked his watch and thought hopelessly of his friend who was about to land at the Seattle airport. Three hours later, the official motioned him into a small, barren room with an American flag. He was sitting on one side and Feldmar was on the other. The official said that under the Homeland Security Act, Feldmar was being denied entry due to "narcotics" use. LSD is not a narcotic substance, Feldmar tried to explain, but an entheogen. The guard wasn't interested in technicalities. He asked for a statement from Feldmar admitting to having used LSD and he fingerprinted Feldmar for an FBI file.

Then Feldmar disbelievingly listened as he learned that he was being barred from ever entering the United States again. The officer told him he could apply to the Department of Homeland Security for a waiver, if he wished, and gave him a package, with the forms.

The border guard then escorted him to his car and made sure he did a U-turn and went back to Canada.

'Curious. Very curious'

Feldmar attended the University of Toronto where he graduated with honours in mathematics, physics and chemistry. He received his M.A. in psychology from the University of Western Ontario. At University of Western Ontario, he was under supervision with Zenon Pylyshyn, who was from Saskatchewan and had participated, along with Abram Hoffer and Duncan Blewett, in the first experiments with LSD-25.

"Zenon told me he had had enough strange experiences, that he had gone about as far with LSD as he wished to go. He still had what was once legal.... Looking back 33 years, I don't quite recall why I decided to accept his tentative offer. I was 27 years old and thought of myself as a rational scientist, and had no experience with delirium, hallucination, or altered mind states. I was curious. Very curious. I thought that, like Faust, I might make a pact with the devil in return for esoteric knowledge."

Zenon gave him 900 micrograms of acid and the surprise of his life, he wrote in the Janus Head article. "Following this initiation, I traveled to many regions many times with the help of many different substances. I took peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, cannabis, MDMA, DMT, ketamine, nitrous oxide 5-MEO-DMT, but I kept coming back to LSD. Acid seemed my most spacious, most helpful ally. While on it, I explored my past, regressed to the womb, to my conception. I remembered, grieved, and mourned many painful events. I saw how my parents would have liked to love me, and how they didn't because they didn't know how. I learned, on acid, to endure troubling and frightening states of mind. This enabled me, as meditation has done, to identify with being the witness of the workings of my mind, observing whatever was going on, while knowing that I was simply captivated by the forms produced by my own psyche."

After receiving his MA, Feldmar spent a semester in the U.S. at the Johns Hopkins University's Ph.D. program in theoretical statistics. In 1969, he began Ph.D. work with Dr. Charles Osgood in psycholinguistics at the University of Illinois at Champagne Urbana. He did further Ph.D. studies at Simon Fraser University.

Legal options expensive

Feldmar was determined, in the months after the aborted border crossing, to turn things around. He was particularly determined because the idea of not being able to visit his children at their homes was unthinkable.

He contacted the U.S. Consul in Vancouver to protest and was again told to apply for a waiver. When he consulted Seattle attorney Bob Free at MacDonald, Hoague and Bayless about going through this process, he learned that for $3,500 (U.S.) plus incidentals, he'd have a 90 per cent chance to get the waiver, but it would probably be just for a year, and the procedure would have to be initiated again, any time he wished to cross the border. Each time, he would have to produce a statement saying that he had been "rehabilitated."

He looked into filing suit against the U.S. government for wrongdoing but gave up the idea when he learned that a legal battle with U.S. Customs would cost his life's savings and, with the balance of power tipped so extremely in the government's favor, he would almost surely lose.

Again, he appealed to the U.S. Consulate. The consulate wouldn't return his phone calls, but in this e-mail message to Feldmar, the consulate explained its position.

"Both our countries have very similar regulations regarding issuance of visas for citizens who have violated the law. The issue here is not the writing of an article, but the taking of controlled substances. I hear from American citizens all the time who have decades-old DUI convictions who are barred from entry into Canada and who must apply for waivers. Same thing here. Waiver is the only way."

Ensnared by Section IV

"Admitted drug use is admitted drug use," says Mike Milne, spokesman for U.S. border and protection, based in Seattle. Milne said he could not comment specifically on the Feldmar case, due to privacy issues, but he quoted from the U.S. Immigration Law Handbook section which refers to "general classes of aliens ineligible to receive visas and ineligible for admissions" to help shed light on the clauses that may have ensnared the Vancouver psychotherapist.

"Persons with AIDS, tuberculosis, infectious diseases are inadmissible," Milne said. And then there is Section IV. "Anyone who is determined to be a drug abuser or user is inadmissible. A crime involving moral turpitude is inadmissible and one of those areas is a violation of controlled substances."

If there's no criminal record, as in Feldmar's case?

Not necessarily the criterion, Milne said. You can still be considered dangerous.

'More diligent and vigilant'

"The level of scrutiny at our nation's borders have definitely gone up since the 9-11 disaster and we are more diligent and vigilant in checking people's identities and criminal histories at our nation's borders."

Milne goes on, "There are three main areas that we have employed since 9-11 to better secure our borders. First is the number of officers we have working at our borders. We've doubled the numbers at the border. We've combined officers from Homeland Security and border protection. We brought in the officers from immigration and naturalization service, the department of agriculture and U.S. border patrol. By combining the expertise of those disparate border agencies into a single agency under a single management with the single purpose of protecting the U.S. against terrorism and other related offences, it created a more effective border agency. It created a more secure border.

"The second thing would be our information systems, our watch list systems are better shared within the U.S. government and between governments, between information sharing agreements, through Interpol, through terrorist watch list sharing internationally, we have better access for our front line officers to query information systems up to and including public based systems, including the Internet. Third, we have better infrastructure at our entries. We have cameras in some of our more remote points of entry, gates, lighting, to make them more secure. We do more checks at the borders. It depends on what level of alert we're at. At certain alert levels we do 100 per cent identity checks."

War on drugs meets war on terror

Eugene Oscapella is an Ottawa lawyer, who lectures on drug policy issues in the department of criminology at the University of Ottawa. He also works as a policy advisor to a range of government agencies and departments, including the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Oscapella sees the American security system upgrades and the potential uses alarming.

"This is about the marriage of the war on drugs and the war on terror, and the blind, bureaucratic mindset it encourages. Government surveillance in the name of the war on drugs and the war on terror is in danger of making us all open books to zealous governments. As someone mentioned at a privacy conference I attended in London, U.K., several months ago, all the tools for an authoritarian state are now in place; it's just that we haven't yet adopted authoritarian methods. But in the area of drugs, maybe we have."

'Ominous omen'

Feldmar was in the process of considering whether to apply for a waiver when he sought help from Ethan Nadlemann, director of the Drug Policy Alliance in New York, whose financial backer is another Hungarian, George Soros.

Nadlemann was outraged. "Nobel Peace prize winners, some of the great scientists and writers in the world have experimented with LSD in their time. We know people are being pulled out of lines and racially profiled as part of the war against terrorism. But this is a different kind of travesty, banning someone because they used a substance in another country thirty years ago," he said.

In February he wrote Feldmar, "Not that it helps much, but I just want you to know that I have not forgotten you or your situation. I feel frustrated vis a vis the media, and on other avenues, but I am not forgetting. I really think this situation is absurd, and an ominous omen of things to come."

When Feldmar was barred from entering the U.S., he joined the ranks of other intellectuals and artists. Pop singer Cat Stevens was turned back from the U.S. in 2004, after being detained. Bolivian human rights leader and lawyer, Leonida Zurita Vargas was prevented from entering in February of 2006. She was planning to be in the U.S. as part of a three week speaking tour on Bolivian social movements and human rights. The tour would have taken her to Vermont, Harvard, Stanford and Washington D.C., but she never got beyond the airport check-in at Santa Cruz, Bolivia where she was informed her ten-year visa had been revoked because of alleged links to terrorist activity.

'Ideological exclusion provision'

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security denied Professor John Milios entry into the country upon his arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport last June. Milios, a faculty member at the National Technical University of Athens, had planned to present a paper at a conference titled "How Class Works" at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Milios told Academe Online that U.S. officials questioned him at the airport about his political ideas and affiliations and that the American consul in Athens later queried him about the same subjects. Milios, a member of a left-wing political party, is active in Greek national politics and has twice been a candidate for the Greek parliament. Milios's visa, issued in 1996, was set to expire in November. The professor had previously been allowed entry into the United States on five separate occasions to participate in academic meetings.

The American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion, the American Association of University Professors and PEN American Center, filed a lawsuit this year challenging a provision of the Patriot Act that is being used to deny visas to foreign scholars. They did this after Professor Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss intellectual, had his visa revoked under "the ideological exclusion provision" of the Patriot Act, preventing him from assuming a tenured teaching position at the University of Notre Dame. It's a suit that attempts to prevent the practice of ideological exclusion more generally, a practice that led to the recent exclusions of Dora Maria Tellez, a Nicaraguan scholar who had been offered a position at Harvard University, as well as numerous scholars from Cuba.

In March 2005, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn more about the government's use of the Patriot Act ideological exclusion provision. Cuban Grammy nominee Ibrahim Ferrer, 77, who came to fame in the 1999 film Buena Vista Social Club, was blocked by the U.S. government from attending the Grammy Awards, where he was nominated for the Best Latin album award in 2004. So were his fellow musicians Guillermo Rubalcaba, Amadito Valdes, Barbarito Torres and the group Septeto Nacional with Ignacio Pineiro. The list goes on.

Cut off from friends

Nine months after being turned back at the border, Feldmar has concluded that his banishment is permanent. The waiver process is exhausting, costly and demeaning. The David and Goliath aspect of the situation is too daunting.

This is devastating to his family and friends. "My father was doing nothing wrong, illegal, suspicious, or at all deviant in any way, when he was trying to visit the U.S.," his daughter, Soma, an instructor at a Denver college, says. "In terms of family it really sucks. "

It's hard for his friend, Alphonso Lingis, a professor of philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. "I'm deeply pained by the prospect of no longer being able to welcome him in the United States," Lingis said. "The notion that he and his work could harm anyone is preposterous. He's a victim of scandalous bureaucratic incompetence by the United States officials involved in this matter."

'Alchemist's dictum'

When Feldmar looks back on what has happened, he concludes that he was operating out of a sense of safety that has become dated in the last six years, since 9-11. His real mistake was to write about his drug experiences and post this on the web, even in a respected journal like Janus Head. He acknowledges that he had not considered posting on the Internet the risk that it turned out to be. So many of his generation share his experience in experimenting with drugs, after all. He believed it was safe to communicate about the past from the depth of retrospection and that this would be a useful grain of personal wisdom to share with others. He now warns his friends to think twice before they post anything about their personal lives on the web.

"I didn't heed the ancient Alchemists' dictum, 'Do, dare, and be silent,'" Feldmar says. "And yet, the experience of being treated as undesirable was shocking. The helplessness, the utter uselessness of trying to be seen as I know myself and as I am known generally by those I care about and who care about me, the reduction of me to an undesirable offender, was truly frightening. I became aware of the fragility of my identity, the brittleness of a way of life.

"Memories of having been the object of the objectifying gaze crowd into my mind. I have been seen and labeled as a Jew, as a Communist, as a D. P. (Displaced Person), as a student, as a patient, a man, a Hungarian, a refugee, an émigré, an immigrant.... Now I am being seen as one of those drug users, perhaps an addict, perhaps a dealer, one can't be sure. In the matter of a second, I became powerless, whatever I said wasn't going to be taken seriously. I was labeled, sorted and disposed of. Dismissed."

Related Tyee stories:

Psychedelics Could Treat Addiction Says Vancouver OfficialCity's drug policy honcho sees 'profound benefits'. A special report. Where Carla and Wayne Shoot UpInside the world of the Insite safe injection clinic. Secret Summit on Shared 'Security'Why was North America's power elite invited to Banff?

Linda Solomon is an award-winning journalist who publishes The Vancouver Observer.

Friday, February 01, 2008

A $2-billion carbon capture and storage plan aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions was released Thursday by a task force established by the Alberta and federal governments in March 2007.

Carbon capture and storage means that the CO2 emitted from oil and gas operations, coal-fired power plants and industrial facilities is injected deep into the ground rather than released into the atmosphere.

The report, called Canada's Fossil Energy Future: The Way Forward on Carbon Capture and Storage, examined what needs to be done to move ahead with the technology in Canada.

"The report has specific recommendations that could move us off neutral, where we've been stuck on carbon capture and storage," said task force member David Keith, who is the Canada Research Chair on Energy and the Environment at the University of Calgary.

"There's been endless talk and hype about this, but nothing has been done," he said.

The report's main recommendation is for the federal and provincial governments to provide $2 billion in funding to get five new carbon capture and storage facilities operating by 2015.

Critics question use of public money

Taxpayers should not have to pay to reduce the pollution created by industry, said John Bennett, executive director of Ottawa-based environmental group ClimateforChange.ca when asked about the recommendation.

"The crux of the matter here is that for some reason the oil industry feels entitled to both pollute and, when we ask [it] not to pollute, to ask for you and me to pay for it. That's not acceptable," Bennett said.

It would be better to create regulations that force industry to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, he said.

Regulations are also needed, said Keith, but until the necessary changes are made, governments need to put up the money required to get the ball rolling.

Alberta's recently released climate change plan relies heavily on the development of carbon capture and storage technology to achieve reductions of 14 per cent below 2005 levels by 2050.

Although neither the provincial nor federal government has commented on the task force report, Keith said he is optimistic the technology will get the support it requires.

Defend the Border: The CBC's new show can only help "the bad guys" by Justin Podur; January 05, 2008

The phrase “defend the border” wasn’t always a metaphor. And it isn’t just a metaphor in many parts of the world, even today: some states do have to worry about overland military invasions.

Canada is not such a state. To the degree that it is, the only conceivable invader is, of course, the United States. Those in Canada who talk about “defending the border” are distinctly unconcerned about such a possibility. They are, instead, making an analogy for a set of power institutions designed to keep “them” out and “us” safe.

Some argue that the threat of terrorism to Canada is so great that it outweighs any mushy, politically correct concerns. The historian J.L. Granatstein, in his book, “Whose War Is It?” makes such claims (1). So, with its new show, does the CBC, a point to which I’ll return below. Stripped down to basics, his argument is that Canada, to be safe, needs to subordinate its foreign policy to the US and join its War on Terror wholeheartedly, instead of half-heartedly. The most incredible aspect of his book, however, is that Granatstein relies on fiction – literally, entirely fictional scenarios about Muslim terrorists releasing poison gas in a Toronto subway at the same time as a natural disaster on the West Coast – to demonstrate how Canada needs to have better military preparedness. Granatstein can’t find real threats to justify his policy suggestions, so he makes them up. The detention of over a dozen young Muslim men in Toronto for over a year, accused of some sort of convoluted terrorist plot and possibly entrapped by the authorities, suggests that perhaps Canada’s police and intelligence agencies are also in the business of making up threats (2).

Besides making up threats, the policy suggestions of this school of thought are designed to bring such threats into existence. If certain kinds of terrorism are correlated with foreign occupation, as for example Robert Pape argued in his systematic study of suicide terrorism (“Dying to Win”), Canada’s participation in the occupation of Afghanistan, supported by these hawks, is increasing the threat to Canadians. So, too, is Canada’s support for Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, its bombing of Lebanon, and the US occupation of Iraq.

This two-pronged approach, trying to create public fear and racism by contriving fictional threats on the one hand, and participating in occupations and human rights violations on the other, results in a toxic public conversation and a deadly foreign policy. All the same, it is embraced by historians like Granatstein, right-wing newspapers like the National Post, and, most recently, by the CBC.

The CBC’s new show, “The Border”, provides an expensive fictional apology for this two-pronged approach. Its heroes wrestle with moral dilemmas. According to the show’s publicity, “every week, a crack team of Canadian immigration and customs agents deal not only with the latest border-security crisis, but also with the consequences of their actions. Are they rushing to judgment? Are the bad guys really bad guys, or just victims of racial profiling?”

Wrestling with moral dilemmas of immigration and customs would of course be welcome, and Canadians can certainly use more such wrestling. But if the questions are those of an impoverished moral universe (“are the bad guys really bad guys?”) then the answers aren’t going to yield any riches. If we begin from the premise that there are these “bad guys” who threaten us because they are “bad guys”, and the job of customs agents is to use high-tech surveillance and psychological interrogation methods to ferret the “bad guys” out from the ordinary victims of racial profiling, we have already forfeited our moral and political sense. War and terrorism are political phenomena. They are done by political actors (including the US and Canada, if we are consistent in our definitions of war and of terrorism, as well as groups like al-Qaeda) pursuing political agendas with the means they have available. To stop war or terrorism requires first understanding these agendas and actors and seeking political solutions to the problems. This does not exclude the use of force or intelligence, but there is no way that fear, faked threats, celebrating the shredding of civil liberties, ignorance, or propaganda can help. The propaganda of “bad guys” and “evildoers” is itself a tool of war, and the CBC’s new show is such a tool.

I perused “The Border” website (cbc.ca/theborder), viewed the character profiles, and played the online game. The show does, indeed, look well-produced, well-acted, and well-written, which of course makes it worse. The main character, Mike Kessler, is a former JTF2 “counter-terrorism” officer who helped cover-up a massacre in Bosnia, and is tormented by his past. His goal, according to the website, is “to stop people like Mannering (a CSIS agent) from using fear to subvert democracy and take over the country.” This, too, sounds noble, as does his “struggle to hold a line of decency and integrity in a world gone mad.” But the very premise, Kessler’s fundamental moral dilemma – how do you keep your decency while fighting “evil” – is flawed, and from it one can never reach an understanding of what is really happening in these wars. The real question for such agents in the war on terror is simpler: how do you keep your decency while doing evil. And the answer is clear. You can’t.

Other characters with moral dilemmas include Layla Hourani, the “South Asian woman in a white man’s job, a Muslim agent who locks up Muslim bad guys” and finds herself drawn to her charming, roguish partner Gray Jackson, a “womanizer, gambler, and all-round cowboy, with an athlete’s body and an easy, amiable smile.”

Gray and Layla are the agents you face when you play the Border’s interactive game. They intimidate you and present you with fabricated evidence that you committed a border violation, threatening you with a 48-hour detention, using various psychological techniques like asking you why you are so nervous and telling you they already know you did something. When you pass the interrogation, Kessler comes in and says he admires your ability to keep your cool and would like to recruit you to work for ICS. When you accept, you are on to the next level and the next assignment, trying to locate an “evildoer” named Tariq Haddad. Tariq Haddad is an Afghan national whose languages are Arabic and English. This is itself interesting, since Arabic isn’t one of Afghanistan’s national languages and Haddad is an Arab surname – but perhaps the evildoer is a naturalized Afghan. In any case, your assignment is to locate Haddad using spy technology to find his cellphone, and then crack the code allowing you to read his hard drive. There, you find that Tariq Haddad is probably planning to blow up Toronto’s airport. The trailer for the show has Tariq Haddad in a hostage situation at the airport, with his gun at a woman’s head. Kessler coolly tells him this is nothing but suicide. And it’s hard to imagine how any of it can end well.

Casting immigration agents as action heroes fighting fictional threats covers up what they really do. They aren’t sexy action heroes keeping the country safe. They are bureaucrats who deport people who overstay their visas, pull children out of school to deport them and their parents, hand Canadian citizens off to other countries be tortured for ten months, and raid churches to deport people trying to claim sanctuary. They terrorize a whole class of people who live and work in the West without status, exploited and abused by employers, invisible and unable to participate because if they were to live openly they would be deported. The “good guys” profit from the labor of these people who are unable to claim their rights because they live in fear of immigration agents. The whole thing is all the more sordid because Canada’s international behavior, like other wealthy countries, helps create conditions in which people have to flee their homes and be exploited and live in fear. Once they are on this side of The Border, these people are illegal (or, if they are on some limited special work visa, partially legal), without rights, subject to arbitrary power. A documentary like Min Sook Lee’s “El Contrato” can show something of this reality, as can a feature film like Ken Loach’s “Bread and Roses” or Stephen Frears’s “Dirty Pretty Things” (3). But in such stories, immigration agents aren’t heroes. They are the first line of defense of a rotten system.

For all its seeming moral complexity, “The Border” thinks it knows who the bad guys are and thinks it knows that they aren’t us. But there is no way out of this war that doesn’t reject these very premises. “Bad guys” are those who kill and torture and bomb and starve to achieve their ends, regardless of what passports they carry or where they were born. The more powerful they are, the badder they can be. And on the other hand, the thousands of American victims of 9/11, the million Iraqi victims of the US war on Iraq and the uncounted tens of thousands of Afghan victims of the US/Canada/NATO war on Afghanistan all deserve to be counted, with dignity and proportion. Everything that works against that sense of proportion, the CBC’s new show included, is going to keep us fighting this senseless and yes, evil, war, longer.

1) See Jim Miles’s review of this book for ZNet: 2) Thomas Walkom’s reporting on this case has been the best, though he makes the important point that he and other reporters have been denied access to information needed to make a proper report.3) For El Contrato, see the description and order it here: http://www.nfb.ca/collection/films/fiche/?id=51087. For “Bread and Roses”, here:

Sunday, January 27, 2008

I have been asked by many ICH readers if I can recommend a way for them to help the children of Palestine. I would like to suggest the Palestine Children's Welfare Fund .

The Palestine Children's Welfare Fund is an enterprise that was established by a group of individuals whose goals are to improve the living standards of the children of Palestine in the refugee camps inside Palestine. The group aims to provide the children of the refugee camps with better educational opportunities, health facilities and a bright future without violence, hatred and discrimination. The organization has branches and volunteers in more than ten countries and is not connected with any militant or political association of any kind.

The group is a non-political, non-religious enterprise whose aspirations are purely humanitarian and for the purpose of emancipating the children of Palestine and the human rights of the people and children of Palestine.

One hundred percent of the donations go to the children in Gaza and other children throughout Palestine. There are no administrative costs due to the fact that all staff is made up of all volunteers who work out of or our homes or businesses.

You can make a one time donation by clicking here, or sponsor a child on a monthly basis by clicking here.

You may have noticed the postings on my website this week about a man called Richard

Warman. His attacks on free speech - including my own - in league with government agencies and Jewish organisations like B'nai B'rith, the Anti-Defamation League (whose job is to defame people) and the Canadian Jewish Congress need urgently to be exposed to the wider world.

This is not just a story about Canada - it is the blueprint for the end of free expression that is unfolding across the planet under the guise of Orwellian terms like 'Political Correctness' and 'Hate Speech'.

I first came across Richard Warman, a 'lawyer' working for the Canadian government, when he campaigned with the above organisations to have my public talks in Canada and elsewhere banned because I was a 'racist'. This is invariably the insult hurled at anyone who gets close to the truth. Even people demanding the truth about 9/11 or those questioning the official version of global warming have been dubbed as akin to 'Holocaust Deniers' and if you question any aspect of the official version of the Nazi concentration camps you can now be jailed by the Thought Police.

Ernst Zundel, an elderly pacifist, was illegally abducted from his home in the United States, thrown in a Canadian jail and eventually extradited to Germany to be jailed again for the maximum five years by a kangaroo court masquerading (barely) as the arbiter of 'justice'.

What was Zundel's 'crime'? Differing from the official history of what happened in the Nazi camps. He was, in other words, jailed for this thoughts, his views.

Even his lawyer, Sylvia Stolz, has now been jailed for three-and-a-half years, and banned from practising law for five years, for having the same thoughts and views as her client.

All this in 'free' Germany.

What happens in fascist states is that the verdict and the sentence are agreed before the trial or the evidence. That is what happened with Zundel and that is what happens in the 'justice' and 'human rights' system in Canada, as we shall see.

What we need to understand before all freedom is extinguished is that you don't have to agree with what someone says to defend their right to say it. Indeed, you are defending your right to say and think what you choose because unless everyone has free speech and free thought then no-one does. You can't be free to think and say what you believe if someone is deciding what you can think and say.

That is not freedom of speech or thought - it is the freedom to agree with what the Big Brother state allows you to think and say.

As Voltaire is claimed to have said: 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.'

Why? Because your freedom is my freedom.

So what is happening in Canada and elsewhere is an attack on the freedom of everyone and what is happening is truly, truly, staggering in what is claimed - hilariously - to be a 'free society'.

Richard Warman was a member of the Canadian Green Party when I first came across him in the 1990s and he went on to be an 'investigator' for the Canadian Government's 'Human Rights' Commission (which is like George Orwell calling his propaganda ministry the 'Ministry of Truth').

Warman would find out where I was speaking and then contact the venue to say that I was an 'anti-Semite' who was going to blame Jews for everything in my presentation. Most of the spineless idiots at these venues - with honourable exceptions - would then ban the event without any further investigation.

You can see him at work trying to stop my talk in Vancouver in a British Channel 4 television documentary from 2001. The link is at the end of this article.

It got so ridiculous at one point that Warman, writing from Canada, almost had me banned from speaking at the little local theatre a few miles from my home in England where I had spoken with no problem many times before.

In the end, the local council insisted on having an 'observer' at the event to ensure that I did not break 'racism laws'. What did she find? Nothing, of course not. But truth is irrelevant - so long as the mud sticks it's job done.

This is what Richard Warman really believes about 'human rights' and free expression. He was asked about his attempts to ban my public events by the London Independent on Sunday magazine. This was his reply:

'He has taken all the conspiracy theories that ever existed and melded them together to create an even greater conspiracy of his own. His writings may be the work of a madman, or of a genuine racist. Either way they are very dangerous ...

... 'If he's unstable then so are his followers, who hang on his every word. What benefit can there be in allowing him to speak?'

That's right, a self-styled 'human rights' campaigner actually said: 'What benefit can there be in allowing him to speak?'

This is the mentality we are dealing with here from a Canadian government lawyer who specialises in targeting people who supposedly breach human rights!! You couldn't make it up.

As a result of the campaign against me by Warman, B'nai B'rith, the Anti Defamation League and the Canadian Jewish Congress, I am stopped, searched and questioned without fail every time I pass through a Canadian airport because I am on a computer 'stop' list. What do they find? Nothing. But what happens the next time I go there? The same.

On one occasion I was held for six hours into the night at Ottawa airport and then again the next morning when all I am saying is that we need to love each other, forget our manufactured differences and unite behind freedom for all, no matter what your colour, creed or religion.

In a speech in Toronto on July 6th 2005, Warman described his modus operandi as a technique of 'Maximum Disruption':

'I've come to the conclusion that I can be most effective by using what I like to describe as a 'maximum disruption' approach. ... If I think that they've violated the Canadian Human Rights Act, then I'll look at all of the potential targets and file complaints against them starting on a 'worst offender' basis, although sometimes if I just find people to be particularly annoying this may move them up the list a bit.'

Warman continues:

'The "maximum disruption" part comes in because wherever I think it will be most helpful, or even if I just feel it will be the most fun, I strongly believe in hitting the neo-nazis on as many of these fronts as possible either at the same time or one after the other. I say this because it keeps them off-balance and forces them to respond to things that focus their energies on defending themselves ...'

(My emphasis. D.I.).

Warman, still an employee of the Canadian government the last I heard, is always strongly supported by B'nai B'rith (Rothschilds), the Anti-Defamation League (Rothschilds) and the Canadian Jewish Congress or 'CJC' (Bronfman family, connected to the Rothschilds).

So much so that the CJC gave him its Saul Hayes Human Rights Award for 'distinguished service to the cause of human rights' (no, that's not a joke) and a report by the Canadian 'Human Rights' Commission said that Warman 'has recently written a detailed report on Internet hate in Canada for the national Jewish group B'nai B'rith's Annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents'.

[caption to photo on Icke’s site]: Canadian Jewish Congress: 'Congratulations Richard Warman, you are doing a wonderful job.'

What is the extent of the connection between Warman and B'nai Brith, the Anti-Defamation League and the Canadian Jewish Congress? Can anyone help?

It gets even more outrageous when you consider that Richard Warman has been using aliases, including one called Mary Dufford, to post racist comments on the very websites that he and the Canadian 'Human Rights' Commission then target for being racist.

Senator Cools

One rant posted on a forum called Freedomsite on September 5th 2003 can be seen below. Apologies for the language, but we are adults and this is what was posted about a black Canadian Senator called Anne Cools.

'Not only is Canadian Senator Anne Cools a Negro, she is also an immigrant!And she is also one helluva preachy c*nt.

She does NOT belong in my Canada. My Anglo-Germanic people were here beforethere was a Canada and her kind have jumped in, polluted our race, and forcedtheir bullshit down our throats.

Time to go back to when the women nigger imports knew their place...And that place was NOT in public!'

This was posted by a user name called '90sAREover' and it was following this that a Warman 'investigation' began into racist postings on the Freedomsite. So who was the poster of this vicious, stomach-turning racism on a site then targeted by Richard Warman for prosecution by the Canadian 'Human Rights' Commission?

Well, well, well.

The owner of the Freedomsite and the target of Warman's subsequent 'investigation' is a man called Marc Lemire, a computer 'nerd' and technical expert who traced the posting to the same computer (IP address = 66.185.84.204) from which was posted another user name called 'Lucy'.

Who was 'Lucy', by his own admission under oath? Richard Warman.

Another computer expert, Bernard Klatt, did his own investigation into the origin of this sick and despicable attack on Anne Cools and this was his verdict in an affidavit submitted as evidence to a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on February 8th 2007:

'Based on the information provided in this affidavit, in my expert opinion, I concluded that the Freedomsite message board user accounts "90sAREover" and "lucy" are those of Richard Warman and that Richard Warman was the poster of the message headed "Cools don't belong in our Senate" posted September 5, 2003.'

Don't bother pinching yourself, I've tried. It was also admitted by the 'Human Rights' Commission that its 'senior human rights investigator', Dean Steacy, posts on the 'White Pride' Stormfront website using the name 'Jadewarr'. The game is simple: get an anonymous account to post racist comments on a website and then charge the website owners with posting racist comments.

Richard Warman is saying of David Icke at this point in the TV documentary: 'I think we can release the hounds now'.

Canadian author and journalist, Mark Steyn, summed it up very well this week when he wrote:

'As I said previously, this isn't entrapment; it's manufacturing the crime. Mr Warman posted these words on a website and then used them as part of his complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. That is Scandal #1.

Furthermore, when the defendant then made plain that he wished to subpoena the records of the ISP to uncover the author of the above post, the Canadian Human Rights Commission mysteriously dropped it from the case. This suggests an explicit collusion between the CHRC investigators and their former colleague, Mr Warman. That is Scandal #2.

For posting these words on the website and then taking said website to the Human Rights Commission, Mr Warman has been substantially enriched by the Canadian state. That is Scandal #3.'

What has happened to Richard Warman as a result of these extraordinary revelations in the 'free' country of Canada where 'everyone is treated equally'? Nothing. As Mark Steyn wrote:

'If this is correct, I don't see how it's possible to regard the Canadian Human Rights Commission as anything other than a racket for one of its former employees. Why should Richard Warman collect five-figure sums from suing websites for "crimes" in which he has himself participated?'

So why is Warman Teflon Man? Why does nothing ever stick or prompt further official investigation?

Warman has been awarded tens of thousands of dollars by the 'Human Rights' Commission that he used to work for and invariably his targets are those without the resources to defend themselves nor pay the fine and money to him without extreme hardship.

Warman brings his cases under something called Section 13 of the Canadian 'Human Rights' Act which is simply a vehicle for blatant censorship. It makes it a 'discriminatory practice' for 'a person or a group of persons acting in concert to communicate ... any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt ...' This includes areas like race, religion, sex and a long list of others. Who decides what is 'likely'? The government agency.

Read that again and you'll see that this could be applied to almost any criticism or contrary opinion. It is a censorship charter and the Canadian 'Human Rights' Commission has said that the truth of any statement is no defence. The head Internet investigator for the CHRC, Dean Steacy, the Stormfront poster 'Jadewarr', said: 'Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value'.

For violating Section 13 (or rather when the 'Human Rights' Commission has decreed that you have) you can be subject to a lifetime ban on your opinions registered with the Federal Court, a fine of up to $50,000 and up to five years in jail.

Now ... are you ready for this ...? Journalist Mark Steyn writes:

'In its entire history, over half of all cases have been brought by a sole "complainant," one Richard Warman. Indeed, Mr. Warman has been a plaintiff on every single Section XIII case before the federal "human rights" star chamber since 2002 — and he's won every one. That would suggest that no man in any free society anywhere on the planet has been so comprehensively deprived of his human rights. Well, no. Mr. Warman doesn't have to demonstrate that he's been deprived of his human rights, only that it's "likely" (i.e. "highly un-") that someone somewhere will be deprived of some right sometime.'

Some more outrageous statistics:

100% of cases have white people as respondents

98% of cases have poor or working class respondents

90.7% of respondents are not represented by lawyers

So far, $93,000 has been awarded in fines and special compensation since 2003.

35 respondents have lifetime speech bans (Cease and Desist) orders and if not followed the victims could face up to 5 years in prison.

72.4% of complaints specifically identify 'Jews' as victims.

As the grip tightens on human freedom this censorship is now targeting even mainstream media outlets like Macleans Magazine and what you are reading here is what is planned for everyone all over the world - that's the 'Totalitarian Tiptoe' with regard to Political Correctness. That's the agenda behind it all. It is not about 'protecting minorities', it is about controlling everyone - including the 'minorities'.

It is actually playing 'minorities' off against each other. If a black person says something a gay person doesn't like he can be prosecuted by the Thought Police. But if the gay person says something the black person doesn't like he can be prosecuted by the Thought Police.

Another 'modus' of Richard Warman is to launch libel actions against those who defend themselves from his attacks on their character or give their opinion of him and his agenda. He has had one running against me now for nearly six years on the book, Children of the Matrix, which was published seven years ago.

Among the ludicrous alleged 'libels' is that, sit down and take a breath, I called him a 'censor' and an enemy of free speech.

Children of the Matrix was published in 2001 and Warman was at my event in Montreal, Canada (which he had worked so hard to ban) when that book was on sale for the first time. In other words, he read what I wrote about him in the summer of 2001.

So did he contact me or the publisher to make a complaint and discuss it? Oh no. Without contacting me in any way, he began writing to bookstores and distributors telling them that he was taking a libel action against me and if they did not stop handling the book they would be included.

Most of these sad and spineless people allowed themselves to be intimidated and the book lost massive potential sales, for which I shall be seeking compensation. Given that Warman was in the Canadian Green Party at the time, a British Green Party member called Justin Walker contacted him and offered to arrange a meeting with me at which his problem could be discussed and resolved. Warman just scoffed at the idea and dismissed it.

Instead he waited almost a year after he had first read the book before issuing me with a libel writ - just before his deadline for doing so ran out. When he threatened the biggest British book distributor, W H Smith, with being included in the action they looked at his behaviour and described it to me as 'bizarre'.

Six years later the case is still rolling on and in the meantime he has continued to behave with regard to freedom of expression in precisely the way I describe in my book - I mean, see above.

Still, at least a full blown court hearing will reveal to the public and the worldwide Internet community the extraordinary story of Richard Warman and the true identity of '90sAREover' and the Anne Cools posting that Warman has denied on oath was him even though the 'IP' (computer) address is the same as the one he used for 'Lucy'.

Today eyes are now opening ever-wider in Canada to what has been going on and Mark Steyn wrote an excellent article for Macleans Magazine headed 'Why should Richard Warman be the only citizen to have his own personal inquisition?' See the links at the end of this text. In another exposé of Warman's weapon-of-choice, Section 13, Steyn says:

'At this point, the Minister of Justice needs to step in. The administration of Section XIII is a public disgrace. I agree with Pundita that it is, in fact, a criminal act in itself. The Minister should order a judicial inquiry into the systemic corruption of Section XIII. Furthermore, in the interim, Agent Dean Steacy should be removed from all "hate" cases, all current cases suspended, and the judgments in those cases brought by Richard The Anglo-German Warman vacated. The mountain of phoney-baloney "jurisprudence" based on the Warman racket should be tossed in the trash.

In the end, Maclean's and I might prevail over this thug racket. But why should we have to spend significant six-figure sums doing so given the prima facie evidence above? Section XIII is misbegotten in theory and a shakedown racket in practice. It's time to end it.'

I repeat, this is not just about Canada or Macleans Magazine or me. It is about all of us. Different sections of society are being picked off while the rest look the other way because they think it does not affect them. Oh, but it does.

The words of Pastor Martin Niemöller come to mind. He was talking about the emergence of the Nazis in Germany, but it is relevant today across the gathering Orwellian world:

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak outbecause I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak outbecause I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Unless we say 'enough!' now, we have seen nothing yet. We have a choice: a line in the sand now or a global fascist dictatorship ruled by the Thought Police.

It's our call and we'd better make it quick.

PLEASE NOTE: These newsletters are copyrighted for subscribers only, but the information included here is so important that on this occasion please feel free to circulate this in the coming days and weeks - along with the TV documentary and other links below - to anyone and everyone you think ought to read or see them.

Let us remove the power to suppress provided by lack of public awareness.

Thank-you.

..

Richard Warman: 'Lucy' and '90sAREover'

“No, I don't post on websites that I target.”

Er, oh, you can prove it?

Oh yeah, I remember now, I do.

Here is the interchange between Richard Warman and Barbara Kulaszka, the counsel of one of his targets, Marc Lemire, when he was questioned about the screen names 'Lucy' and '90sAREover' at a Canadian Human Rights' Tribunal on February 1st, 2007.